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$1 is not market.

I've signed up for or seen the contracts for several payment processors across several companies. Rack rate for ACH debit starts at $0.25/trx and goes down to sub-penny at scale. Returns can be high though ($2 per, going down as well).

Edited to add: that's not a defense, I *loathe* ACH. It's a negative-reporting system which is such a pain to deal with.

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My understanding is that sameday ACH does not cost extra (from a network perspective) than regular ACH, it's just that some shitty banks apparently like to charge extra for it.
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Outside the AI summaries, I couldn’t easily find the sources. But a couple of different sources say same-day ACH is 5.2 cents per outgoing item while overnight is 0.35 cents.

What I can say is the Fed has draconian rules for pricing its services. The services cannot be subsidized but must be priced to recover costs, including a return on capital similar to what a private payment system (ie from the Clearinghouse) would expect.

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This seems to be the official pricing info: https://www.frbservices.org/resources/service-fees/ach-2026/

I read it as the sending institution pays 5.2 cents to the receiving institution per item, on top of the 0.35c/item + 0.1c/item same-day surcharge for a maximum of 5.65 cents/item before volume discounts.

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